How can marketers satisfy this unquenchable desire for new content? One technology that helps tackle the need for developing and delivering a constant stream of personalized content to customers is natural language generation (NLG).

SPONSORED WEB EVENTS

SOURCEBOOK

Get your copy of the first ever Digital Experience Sourcebook from EContent, which is packed with information about the past, present, and future of all the topics that matter to digital content professionals.

Lead Globalization by Thinking and Acting Like Founders

The role and impact of people in digital globalization comes to play in many ways. People and processes come first. This fact is a major incentive to lead the globalization of content and products like business founders would, even when leaders in that area did not initiate such efforts and took such activities over from other people. Adopting an ad hoc mindset matters as much as defining strategies to grow internationally. From this perspective, time and cost effective execution depends significantly on human factors. Here are a few reasons why business founders should be an ongoing source of inspiration and development for globalizing organizations willing to address local markets or accelerate their digital globalization journey.

Globalization should never be taken for granted--Founders demonstrate how important agility and resilience are in global business at all times. Challenges and changes are always around the corner, and mostly driven by customers and/or competitors. Engaging with international audiences and delighting local clients tomorrow may not look the same as it did today. Founders know that success demands even more endurance when it means performing across international markets. This applies to internal operations as well. Founders are good at mentoring and teaching other people the way to get things done. Therefore globalization leaders should always bear in mind that their teams, stakeholders, and colleagues may not buy in right away--regardless of how frequently and deeply they are exposed to global dependencies.

Globalization requires alignment and leadership--Most founders cannot succeed without being supported and lifted up by others who help power a cross functional and cross disciplinary engine within the organization. An efficient globalization framework implies bringing people together and making leadership a priority. In other words it means explaining, training, developing, mentoring, and elevating people at all levels of the organization and with diverse backgrounds. Founders invest a lot of time and money in human interaction, both collectively and individually.

Globalization is a strategic investment rather than a mere cost--Many founders see what they spend to grow as a long-term investment for their business. Globalization leaders should follow that example as far as their mission is concerned, given it is at the crossroads of digitalization and globalization imperatives as well as at the intersection of content, product, and technology management. This perspective must be at the heart of globalization efforts in order to turn them into valuable assets as well as to secure future investments ensuring sustainable growth.

Globalization takes place on a customer centric battlefield--Some founders start their business in a niche. Eventually others come along and broaden the existing product and service offerings. In any case, they have to fight relentlessly to win the business of customers in the digital age. Either they have to challenge and stay ahead of competition or they have to capture and retain demanding customers. They have to be on both fronts more often than not. It becomes even more necessary and permanent when they want to grow beyond borders. Customer centricity remains a major competitive advantage and this is what globalization is all about. Global business may be considered an abstract concept as long as it does not become truly concrete. It thrives only when local customers make it real and profitable. Business founders and globalization leaders must share this focus on customers and articulate their respective plans around it.

Globalization requires intrapreneurship--Since digital globalization may be running in a fragmented fashion within multinational organizations, globalization leaders should better brand themselves as intrapreneurs to unify accountability and (re)create end-to-end value chains delivering products and services. Like company founders they should build a robust foundation and team with a great deal of personal “motivaction.” Entrepreneur skills such as anticipation, empathy, perseverance and resilience are vital to unleash the full potential of digital globally. Yet they have to avoid doing this by creating a silo that would prove to be counterproductive eventually.

Related Articles

Whenever digital globalization is initiated or accelerated the testing stage is a critical milestone to certify that global content delights target audiences and thrives in any target market. This may sound like any other testing effort regardless of scope and nature. Yet, it must be considered holistically. Leading it as a mainstream activity and prioritizing sanity checks are two typical pitfalls that put globalization testing off track and off budget. A couple of guidelines should be kept in mind to avoid ending up with unnecessary iterations and to generate cost effective takeaways.

It is sometimes useful to reiterate facts that are taken for granted—or expectations that are may seem obvious—in order to remind some people about the basic imperatives of content globalization. After decades of global expansion, it is surprising to hear about misconceptions or assumptions that may lead global products or services to an unexpected hall of shame. Before talking about the finish line it is necessary to define the start line and the distance to run.

Agreeing to name content globalization properly is often a recurring issues and surprising challenge when setting the appropriate stage and sustaining it over time. A lack of convergence in this area often comes from the diversity of definitions that exist, as well as individual opinions on how to put the concept of globalization into practice.

Everyone has heard the cliché, "every company is a technology company". While we know that's not true, it is true that every company is powered by technology. It used to be that an internet connection and a Microsoft office subscription was good enough for small companies, and for larger companies, same thing but add some servers. Now, though, with the influx of data that needs to be managed, a solid IT infrastructure is more than necessary.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard this sentence: "My local reviewer is bilingual!" People use this to justify why and how someone has been identified to review and sign off on localized content. Here are three reasons why linguists are invaluable resources to check localized content effectiveness, implement actual corrections, and collaborate with business experts in order to complete an in-depth and unbiased review.

Do you need a globalization management solution? While this question has been around for quite some time the answer remains relevant and challenging for global content and product leaders. Prior to defining detailed specifications, you should bear in mind a few, more high level, business considerations tied to your expectations and goals.